Democrats successfully forced Elon Musk to abandon DOGE before originally planned by vandalizing his company’s cars, attacking dealerships, intimidating Tesla owners current and potential, and causing Musk’s business interests to suffer major financial losses.
Thoughts:
1. It is too much to ask for me to criticize Musk for reacting as he has to these attacks encouraged by Democratic officials and others. However, by quitting Musk validated an illegal and unethical strategy, one that will only get more extreme and violent now, I believe.
2. This is one more reason why I believe Trump’s pardoning the J-6 assholes was justifiable, though I would not have issued the sweeping pardons he did. The hypocrisy and excessive prosecutorial zeal of Biden’s Justice Department was palpable: the J-6 rioters were targeted as much for who they supported as for the laws they broke.
3. Musk’s vulnerability also reveals why public servants cannot function efficiently and without crippling conflicts unless they forswear their financial holdings, responsibilities, connections and interests, at least as much as possible. Trump is the first CEO/entrepreneur POTUS. There are many good reasons why we haven’t had any before, and the Musk episode illustrates why we are unlikely to have another any time soon.
4. It sure would be helpful if Trump, or Musk, or Vance would make a strong, clear public statement about how so many progressives and Democrats enabled and applauded terrorist tactics to protect their money train. It is a key reason why this party, now corrupted and ruthless, should be wiped from the political landscape permanently.
5. Imagine if, following the J-6 riot (I hate short-hand names like J-6, 9-11 and the rest, but I also can’t type worth a damn, so every shortcut is tempting), Congress had decided not to certify the election pending a full investigation. The only way to stop domestic terrorism (and terrorism generally) is to have an iron-clad, unbreakable policy that whatever objective lawbreakers and terrorists advocate will never be considered once violence is employed to advocate that objective. Once, the U.S. refused to negotiate with terrorists, even for the release of hostages. Then we had Iran-Contra in the Reagan Administration, Obama paid off Iran so it wouldn’t nuke Israel until later, Biden pushed to have Israel stop fighting its essential war against Hamas, ensuring that the October 6 terrorist attack would be seen as advancing the cause of “From the river to the sea,” and the BLM rioting prompted major companies, universities and the government to abandon merit for discrimination against whites.
7. I won’t condemn Musk for giving up his extra-curricular public service to fulfill his duty as a CEO to his stockholders. However, he (and others) should have seen the effort to intimidate him coming before he accepted the DOGE gig. Now the worst of the Left feels its violent tactics are validated along with its unethical “by any means necessary” philosophy.
Ethics Alarms 
I don’t think the premise has the benefit of being true. My understanding is that “Special Government Employees” are limited to working 130 days out of a 365 day period, Musk was an SGE, and his 130 days were up. He could technically become a permanent employee and collect a salary, but that’d be a little self-defeating, and it doesn’t sound like the administration was keen on the idea because he’d been butting heads with people over the Big Beautiful Bill.
Basically… Elon always had an expiration date, and it was always June.
The optics of leaving now are bad…. But I don’t know what could be done about that.
That was my understanding, as well. His time was up, but the timing of his departure has caused some activists to treat their behavior as victorious. When he was nearing the end of his tenure there, I saw articles suggesting the Trump administration would break the rules for him and that was evidence of, ya know…malfeasance, totalitarianism, yadda, yadda.
That was my understanding as well, except that early on Musk said he had promised a year to DOGE, and anyway, all that matters is that they started vandalizing Teslas and attacking dealerships, the stock plunged and Musk quit. It looked like the terrorism worked, and if it looked that way, then it did. I think that conclusion is inescapable.
And even if the SGE restriction didn’t play a part here, I think he’s demonstrating the proper fiduciary responsibility to his real job(s) by stepping away from his other (SGE) pursuits when it became clear via the Q1 earnings call that he was either neglecting his role as CEO, damaging the brand via his other pursuits, or (most likely) a combination of both.
The argument could be made that he never should have agreed to be a SGE while heading other companies, but I’d argue that compared to what he’s already running, there was little likelihood that doing DOGE would have pushed him over the edge into not being capable of running Tesla and SpaceX.
Jack,
Not sure 9/11 counts as shorthand at this point: it’s simply what the event is called. What would you consider the proper way?
“The September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks”?
The Twin Towers bombing. The 2001 Terrorist attacks. Lots of things have happened on September 11, including the birthday of a friend of mine.
That policy can be exploited with reverse psychology terrorism. “The attacks will continue unless you Musk continues to work as a Special Government Employee!”
Of course, if the government knows some people are doing reverse psychology terrorism, then the whole dynamic flips back. “Nice try.”
The issue them becomes figuring out how many levels of reverse psychology any particular group of terrorists is using. At that point, we arrive at what I would expect to be the logical option: disregarding the words of terrorists.
“The only way to stop domestic terrorism (and terrorism generally) is to have an iron-clad, unbreakable policy that whatever objective lawbreakers and terrorists advocate will never be considered once violence is employed to advocate that objective.”
What if the unbreakable policy was aimed at the perpetrators of terrorism such as the death penalty for using violence to promote a political agenda. Bu definition, treason is defined as using violence (with arms) to effectuate political change or overthrow an existing elected government. Arms can be defined more broadly than simply guns. Home made flame throwers using gasoline and garden sprayers are arms in my book.
We should never reward the terrorists by elevating them to prestigious academic positions as we did with Bill Ayres, Bernadine Dohrn and Angela Davis.
I’ll criticize Musk for capitulation to the Left when the University of Chicago, Harvard, UC Davis dismiss the above from their ranks.
What else is new? The left has always operated this way.
https://status451.com/2017/01/20/days-of-rage/
Elon was a “special government”employee with a 130 day limit, so his time just ran out on May 30. Has nothing to do with the other reasons you gave.